


The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth

by Itneveroccurredtomeatall



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Old Age, Old Peggy Carter, valentines day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 16:41:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17791016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itneveroccurredtomeatall/pseuds/Itneveroccurredtomeatall
Summary: Steve visits Peggy on Valentine's Day and thinks about what could have been





	The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything! 
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day! 
> 
> The title is from Shakespeare

 

She was asleep, which wasn’t unusual. It seemed that she was getting more and more easily tired by even simple tasks. Her memory was getting worse, according to the staff.

Sometimes she was completely lucid. He loved those days. They would talk like the old friends they both were and were not (because time has taken on a completely new meaning to Steve) and marvel at how much the world had changed in their lifetime and think about how many more changes were to come. They would laugh about their days at war and the reckless things they’d done. It was different, though. Peggy had had a lifetime to process it, to build a life beyond the war, to see beautiful things after all the pain and destruction. Steve had really just gotten out of the war. It was all he could remember before he was suddenly in the twenty-first century, decades after the war had ended. When he closed his eyes, he could still imagine hearing the gunfire and the smell of smoke and the general sense of dread would fill him until there wasn't room for anything else. He was certain that spending time with Peggy and seeing how her life had continued after the war was helping him cope with his transition to modern times.

Other days she didn’t recognize him at all. She would hit a button that called for the staff and report him as an intruder. He would be escorted from the room while the staff members looked at him with pity and offered him a cup of complimentary coffee before he left. He referred to it as sympathy coffee. And then he’d ride his motorcycle out in the countryside for hours before returning to his apartment and crawling into bed to cry in the privacy of his own room.  

And there were some days where she was certain he was an angel finally coming to take her away and she would smile up at him and tell him she was ready. Steve always cried on those days. He would hold her hand and kiss her forehead and tell her it wasn’t her time yet while his tears splashed onto her.

Steve propped a lace Valentine’s Day card up on the table and quietly plucked the old flowers from the vase and drained the water into the planter outside the window. He refilled the vase and arranged the roses carefully before returning it to Peggy’s bedside table and sitting in the chair to wait.

He watched her in her peaceful sleep and idly wondered whether or not she dreamt.

He often found himself dreaming of what his life would have been like had he not disappeared under the ice all those years ago. It was selfish, really. Sometimes he hated himself for wishing he had just stayed put. The world needed him now. And he would do everything he could to protect Earth and her people. But sometimes he just wanted to go back to when everything was so much simpler.

If he hadn’t disappeared, he would have met Peggy for that dance. They would have spent the night dancing and laughing. She would’ve been a very good dance instructor, but he would have been a hopeless student and they would’ve eventually abandoned the dance floor for a well-deserved drink at the bar. They would’ve stayed until the bar closed and then spent the rest of the night walking together, laughing together, until they reached the docks where they would’ve watched the sun rise before parting ways.

They would’ve kept working, naturally. Steve wouldn’t have been allowed to give it up and Peggy wouldn’t have been able to; she loved her job too much. But they would’ve worked together. They would have spent long night after long night figuring out ways to better the world and they wouldn’t have ever settled. He would’ve helped her and Howard found SHIELD or another organization like it.

Eventually, he would have proposed to her. He would’ve done something simple. Something sweet. Something he knew she would’ve liked. And she would have said yes.

They would have gotten married in a small, intimate ceremony. He didn’t have any family members left. But Dum Dum, Morita and the rest would have been there and they would have been more than enough.

They would have bought a house together. Somewhere nice and quiet with a beautiful yard and a large tree. The yard would soon be occupied by a dog and then by their children. Steve would have built them a treehouse that they would’ve loved for years. And that love would be passed on to the next generation when they sent his grandchildren to spend the summers with him and Peggy. They would’ve been retired by that point and love nothing more than to dote upon their grandchildren.

It would have been perfect.

Sometimes he told himself that he was meant to be here in this strange future he never could have imagined. He told himself that the people needed Captain America more than the 1940s needed him. But sometimes he just wanted to be Steve Rogers: a man without crippling responsibilities, a man who doesn’t need to learn decades of history and technology from times he never lived in. And he knew he was one of the most selfish people out there.  

So, he tried to concentrate on the present and forget the past and everything that could have been, but it all seemed to bubble up to the surface each time he visited Peggy.

Her face was still calm and her breathing was steady. Despite her advanced age, Steve could still see the remnants of her youth. She was much weaker now, but just as fierce as he remembered her. Her eyes were flickering beneath her eyelids. Maybe she was dreaming after all.

And then Peggy opened her eyes. For a moment, she glanced at the bedside table, taking in the card and the flowers. Then she turned her gaze to meet his.

“Steve, thank you.” She was looking at him with a small smile on her face. “And Happy Valentine’s Day.”


End file.
